How to Organize Your Guided Reading Materials

 Organization...a constant state of moving things from one location to another, trying to find the perfect place to store items so that we can later retrieve them and use them quickly. How accurate is that definition? Or how about this one: Organization...a system that allows for ease and the improvement of instruction! That's a definition we can all agree on. Right?

My husband says that I organize to organize! But, being organized can save us tons of time! Here are some organization tips for guided reading:

Getting Organized for Guided Reading

1. Get a notebook just for guided reading. I keep this book on my table. I have everything I need right in that book!

2.The first page in the notebook has a lesson plan overview. This helps us to have all the management items right there on one page.  This keeps us from searching for all those lists we made and put somewhere!

3. Divide the notebook into sections--a section for each of your groups. We put the names on post in notes and stick them to piece of paper that we slide inside a plastic sleeve. We wanted a way that we could move kids without having to make new lists.

4.Have a "working" lesson plan for each group. These are quick notes to help us plan our word work and comprehension.  It also gives us a place to collect data that we can use for planning next week. You can print this form out here. Thanks to Megan's teaching partner for sharing this with us!

5. We love this resource, "The Continuum of Literacy Learning". It has information for teaching points and strategies at each reading level. We print the level for each of our groups to have right there in front of us!

6. Make a tab for each of your children. Store all of their running records behind the tab. This will show you growth over time.  You can download our running record form here.  I love this form! It has 100 boxes. This makes it easy to count the words in a passage. It also, lets us know when they have read 100 words...that's enough! ***We do a running record during each guided reading group! As the children are reading their warm up, we pick one student to read a cold read. This allows us to collect 10 records every week!

 7. Here are a few more tips we use to organize our guided reading block. Make a folder for each group, each day that you will meet with them. Inside the folder put everything you need--the readers, word work activities, etc. (Short e Book from Reagan's Big Phonics Bundle.)

8.We keep this tall storage unit right beside our teaching table.  The drawers have all the novelties and supplies that we use during guided reading!

Hope these tips have you calling yourself the Queen of Organization! Happy Organizing....